Letters: Sandy Hook – school safety, mental health and more

I suggest that all licensed mental health care professionals be required to provide pro bono services at a ratio of one indigent to every two paying patients the professional services. We could then actually determine how really effective mental health care is.

As a liberal once quipped, “We should never let a disaster go to waste.” – Jim Reid, Pacific Beach

The president of the NRA went on the record recently as a response to the national sorrow and horror of the events on Dec. 14. While his organization is anathema in philosophy to mine, he did have some good points.

Our nation needs to address our national denial of mental illness and treatment in our society. And we need to address the overreaching of our media in general to glamorize and focus on adult level interests. Way too often children are exposed prematurely to adult entertainment. The constitutional rights of adults does clash with the less-stated rights of children. As for increasing our armed security personnel, I can only think of Franco’s Spain and how safe one could feel. And, yet, our constitutional rights of free speech and civil rights could be greatly impinged upon. – John H. Borja, Nestor

To respond to the letter by Bill Cropp (Dec. 21): Although certainly such behaviors are mental health problems, as a psychologist I wish laypeople would not presume to proffer such diagnoses which are conjecture and/or inaccurate. – Tom Harpley, Ph.D., San Diego

Weapons specifics

In the debate over gun control, we should at least get our terms straight.

Fully automatic firing weapons are for military use only and are outlawed for the general population. The Army’s fully automatic combat rifle, the AR-15, can have three trigger settings. Single shot semi-automatic; pull the trigger and one round is fired. Triple shot; pull the trigger and three rounds are fired. Fully automatic, pull the trigger and rounds are fired until the trigger is released or the magazine empties. The Army’s fully automatic AR-15 is the closest thing to an assault rifle in the gun-control debate and it is illegal for the general population.

Semi-automatic firing weapons are legal for the general population. The semi-automatic mechanism was invented over a century ago and was a boon to any one owning a firearm. It originally was called self-loading, self-reloading or autoloading. It meant you didn’t have to reload a round every time you pulled the trigger. Self-loading weapons never had the connotation of a military weapon, e.g., assault rifle, until the gun-control lobby started to characterize them as such, and mistakenly called them automatic weapons or assault weapons; looks aren’t everything.

Self-loading weapons make up more than 20 percent or more of the weapons in the hands of private citizens, and the percentage is growing all the time because of their ease of use. Self-loading weapons include both rifles and handguns. If you are defending yourself or your family, you want a weapon you don’t have to load after each round fired, and have as many rounds available as you might need. If you are hunting and need more than one shot, a self-loading weapon is the way to go.